Hello everybody! We have left the land of Oz and are now in EnZed, aka Land of the Long White Cloud. Our Tasman crossing wasn't in the least what we had expected. The Tasman has a nasty reputation in large part because three separate weather patterns feed into the sea separating Tasmania from New Zealand, which means there's almost always a low or a crush zone lurking somewhere. Beside the low pressure systems in the fifties and sixties and their frontal systems sweeping through further north, lows often form just off the southeast coast of Australia and come zooming down into the Tasman with little or no warning, and the remains of cyclones wander in from the Coral Sea. Friends of ours on a Waterline 48 who left from the Australian mainland a few weeks before us got hit by a meteorological "bomb" and had 70 knots of wind for several hours with gusts well over 80. We saw the videotape of their crossing two nights before we left Hobart - not very entertaining when we were about to embark on the same trip.

But for our ten-day crossing, we had nothing but high pressure from the Australian bight to New Zealand. Instead of several frontal systems and at least one low pressure system, as we had expected, we had light easterly winds forward of the beam for almost the entire passage with the exception of one fifteen knot front. We reefed sails twice and put up the reacher once. Other than tacking every day or so, that was the sum total of our sailhandling. It may well be the first time we have finished a passage more rested than when we started.

HAWK sailed extremely well, and we averaged 6 knots for the ten-day passage though we rarely had more than 8 knots of true wind. We motored more than we would have liked, but managed to sail about two-thirds of the time sometimes in winds as light as 2-3 knots. The night before we made landfall on Cape Reinga at the north of New Zealand's north island, the sea was so calm the stars were perfectly reflected in it. It was impossible to tell where the sea ended and the sky began and it felt as if we were suspended inside a star-filled sphere.

New Zealand has changed a great deal in the decade since we were here last. We remembered the Bay of Islands as a sleepy and largely undeveloped area, and compared it to Maine in the 1960s or Long Island Sound in the 1950s. Last Sunday evening as we approached the channel leading to Opua on the west coast of the North Island, we were one of about fifty sail and power boats heading for the marinas and anchorages around Russell and Opua. Dolphin tour boats circled around a pod of bottlenose dolphin swimming in the middle of the channel; powerboats filled with thrill- seeking tourists did donuts at speed, the people inside screaming and cheering. But the area remains breathtakingly beautiful, with upthrust islands and pillars of rocks dotting the bay, and wooded hills surrounding it.

We have spent the last week in a large marina here in Opua that didn't exist when we were here last. We've re-provisioned, filled water, fuel and propane tanks, and plan to head out and explore this area for the next six weeks or so. When we were here last, we spent almost all of our time in Auckland working on SILK, and only spent a couple of weeks up here before clearing out for New Caledonia. So we're looking forward to really exploring this area and seeing some of the places we passed by last time around. We'll head down to Auckland in the middle of May to get some sail work done and to spend some time in that area. Internet access seems to be easy throughout New Zealand, so please feel free to get in touch. We'd love to hear from you!

We hope this finds all of you happy and healthy and wish you the same joy we felt flying over a star-filled sea, awed by the beauty of our precious world.

Fair winds and safe anchorages, Beth and Evans s/v HAWK